An Odyssey Through Breath, Spirit, Service, and the World
Introduction: The Woman Who Breathes the World
There are some lives that seem determined to stay ordinary, clinging safely to the familiar. And then there are lives like the one lived by Adelfa Samson – a life that refuses smallness, a life carved out of storms and struggles into a story that stretches across continents, poses, and transformations.
Adelfa’s life is as vast as the world she has traversed: with journeys spanning over one hundred countries, six continents, and countless cities, mountains, rivers, ruins, deserts, jungles, seas, and sacred sites including multiple World Heritage and UNESCO destinations. Yet her story is not about collecting stamps in a passport; it is about awakening through breath where once breath was scarce, about stepping beyond comfort zones to blaze new trails, and about discovering in every culture she encounters that while lives may look different, at the heart we share the same human purpose – to explore, to connect, and to understand. Her path is one of adoration for magnificent landscapes and reverence for the people who inhabit them, from monks in remote temples to herders in deserts, from nomads in mountain villages to children playing in vast playgrounds. Each journey affirms that travel is not an escape but communion, not distance but closeness, and that both yoga and exploration are means of remembering our shared belonging. Above all, Adelfa’s life is a living invitation: she does not seek to journey only for herself, but to bring her students, her community, and all who are willing into this breathtaking exploration across landscapes both seen and unseen, of earth as well as of spirit.
Early Life: A Childhood of Thin Air
Adelfa entered the world at daybreak in Asia during the monsoon season, which seemed to foretell the challenges that would follow. She was born with asthma. While other children played outdoors, ran with abandon, and chased each other through fields drenched in rain, she often sat on the sidelines or struggled through short breath fits.
The medical care available at the time was primitive. There were no sleek inhalers, no compact nebulizers. Instead, a long suction hose, resembling a small vacuum, was used to drag mucus from her throat, clearing moments of airflow but never providing the relief modern medicine could. Each wheeze etched into her memory the precariousness of breath itself.
Childhood for Adelfa was not carefree. It was layered with restraint, with longing, with the quiet despair of watching from the sidelines. Yet within these restrictive boundaries, resilience was born. She would learn early that while the body can falter, the spirit must never surrender.
Yoga Journey: From Fitness to Awakening
An Accidental Beginning
In adulthood, after relocating to the United States, Adelfa found freedom that once eluded her. She began jogging, hiking, backpacking, and especially playing tennis, which quickly became her “first love”. She played with the vigor of a weekend warrior, finally living the movement-rich childhood she never had.
But years of pounding feet on hard courts and poorly managed injuries took their toll. Surgeries piled up, especially on her feet: bone spurs removed, nerves affected, a recurring neuroma that became a torment. Western medicine’s answers were surgical knives and prescriptions. Relief rarely lasted. Pain often returned.
Then one day, almost casually, everything shifted. During a lunch break walk, she noticed a yoga studio. She walked in and signed up for her first class, – an intermediate Ashtanga session, ninety minutes long.
Ego Meets Humility
Like many new yogis raised in the West, she arrived prepared to “fit in.” She dressed the part, compared herself to the other students, sought to measure her worth against theirs. For the first half of class, she believed her athleticism gave her an advantage. She could keep up. She could even exceed some. Pride filled her like oxygen.
Then came Warrior Two. The teacher approached, pressing her aching foot. Pain shot through her body, sharp and unrelenting. She cried out – a scream that silenced the room and pulled everyone’s gaze. Vulnerability, not victory, folded her in two. It would have been easy to leave forever. Instead, she returned. Again, and again. Something deeper than pride pulled her back.
Dedication and Breakthrough
Before long, she was trading her gym workouts for Mysore-style practice at 5:00 a.m. She became devoted to the structure, the quiet, the self-progression. She devoted herself to a single sequence: kurmasana (tortoise pose), supta kurmasana (sleeping tortoise), and the elusive titibhasana (firefly). For months she practiced, straining, failing, trying again. Then one morning in September 2001, it happened. Guided by her teacher, her legs folded over her shoulders and pressed behind her head. She lifted. She held. Firefly at last. She felt elated. She whispered to herself: “I will never forget this day.”
But that day became unforgettable for another reason. Hours later, news of the Twin Towers collapsing reached her. The world was thrown into chaos. Her personal peak shared breath with collective devastation. That paradox became her teacher. Yoga was no longer about achievement. It was about holding grace in moments of both triumph and terror. Yoga was life.
In the same years that the world reeled from 9/11, Adelfa wrestled with her own collapse: a marriage falling apart. Divorce cast her into grief and disorientation. But yoga never left her. It became her anchor, her daily reset.
Shortly after 9/11, she signed up for her first 200-hour yoga teacher training in San Francisco, California. Every night, tears ran down her cheeks, her body releasing reservoirs of pain she had not known she had stored. Her teacher explained: yoga restructures the nervous system, purging what has long been buried. At first, she did not understand. Tears were not weakness; they were cleansing and clearing. After a few weeks, she stepped out not broken but whole: stronger, steadier, ready to step into a life that had awaited her all along. Sharing her pain-turned-power with others sparked something she never felt in corporate spaces. She realized: yoga was no longer just hers. It was meant to be shared. That is when she felt compelled to write her first book, “Yoga for Daily Living”.
Service as the Core of Practice
Service – seva, as described in Sanskrit – became the deeper unfolding of her yoga. Adelfa viewed her teaching as service. She gave hours to guiding beginners through their doubts and fears, encouraging students with injuries, or offering her presence to communities who were not sure they belonged on the mat. Her yoga extended beyond studios into volunteerism, grassroots work, and nonprofit support. Whether teaching, mentoring, or simply placing her energy where it was needed, she carried a philosophy that yoga without service was half a practice. Compassion, to her, stood equal to discipline.
Corporate To Consciousness
Her background in business management, finance, operations, and human resources was impressive. She wore suits. She had even founded and successfully run her own business, with recognition printed in local business journals. But unlike yoga, it did not feed her soul. Eventually, she shed suits for leggings, deadlines for dharma. The structured discipline she carried from her corporate years transitioned seamlessly into her yoga and teaching – but now it was a discipline rooted in love, not profit, in meaning rather than metrics.
India and the Global Classroom
Travel deepened her yoga just as yoga deepened her travels. Living for a period in Mysore, India, she immersed herself wholly in tradition, learning under teachers who carried direct lineage. Practice at dawn, day after day, in the hot, humid air of South India became one of the most defining experiences of her life. It stripped her ego, refined her posture, tested her grit. But her journey did not stop in Mysore.
The Great Travel Odyssey
Adelfa is a yoga practitioner and a citizen of the world. With over one hundred countries that fill her record of exploration, travel is never just a list. It is lived classrooms, each site another teacher.
Here are glimpses of the lessons stamped into her soul:
The Americas and the Caribbean
From the glaciers and alpine lakes of Canada to the vast wilderness of the United States’ National Parks – Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, Bryce, Arches, Crater Lake, Badlands, Bandelier, and the sculpted spires of Canyonlands’ Needles – every ecosystem stretched Adelfa’s awe. She backpacked California’s rugged Lost Coast, where solitude and crashing waves carved resilience into each step. In Mexico, she roved the Yucatán from Chetumal to Campeche, wandered through the turquoise waters of Bacalar, and descended into hidden cenotes, where light pierced freshwater caverns like blessings from above. Argentina and Brazil bathed her in Iguazu Falls’ thundering spray. In Colombia, Tayrona National Park carried lush jungles into blue seas, a tapestry of ecosystems converging.
Costa Rica sent her tumbling down whitewater rivers – Pacuare, Sarapiquí – lungs pumping as if in dance. Volcanoes Arenal and Rincon de la Vieja belched before her, Monteverde cloud forests whispered their layered secrets. In Nicaragua, she hiked Masaya and Mombacho before strapping a board to her feet to volcano-surf down León’s fiery slopes – playful danger at its best and kayaked the Ometepe Islands. Guatemala’s Lago Atitlán and Pacaya Volcano gave her both serenity and challenge. In El Salvador, she glided above forests on a zipline near El Tunco. In Honduras, she stood at Copán, its Mayan ruins etched into eternity and antiquity. In Cuba, she walked between colonial streets and sunlit beaches, where Cuban music, history and resilience blended into a living testament of the island’s spirit. She spent Christmas in Belize’s serene coasts and stood awed by the mixture of colonial charm and wild energy in Jamaica, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Bonaire, Curaçao, Barbados, Cayman Islands. In Puerto Rico, Adelfa kayaked through a glowing bioluminescent bay under a blanket of stars, each stroke of her oar igniting liquid light as if the universe itself shimmered beneath her. She also hiked El Yunque National Forest where cascading waterfalls and dense canopies reminded her that true magic lies in the meeting of earth, water, and sky. Each island reminded her that paradise is not luxury, but connection. In Aruba, Adelfa soared high above turquoise waters while paragliding, and in the exhilarating act of surrendering fully to the air, she felt true freedom – floating weightlessly above the Caribbean Sea, carried only by wind and wonder.
South America
In Peru, she conquered the strenuous Choquequirao Ruins, trekked the Inca Trail, awed at sunrise over Machu Picchu, and labored upward at Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain), asthma threatening but breath techniques always there as backup. In the Amazon jungle she learned humility watching the locals’ way of life, in Nazca she flew above ancient mysteries etched into earth, in the Sacred Valley she zip-lined over the Urubamba River, surrendering.
In Ecuador, she hiked Cotopaxi Refugio, Chimborazo, and Sierra Negro, then bathed in Quilotoa’s crater and wandered Ingapirca ruins. She entered the Mindo rainforests, Papallacta’s hot springs, and trekked the GalápagosIslands, embracing Darwin’s living laboratory of adaptation.
Across Bolivia, Adelfa wandered the endless white expanse of Salar de Uyuni, where the mirror-like salt flats reflected the sky so completely that she felt suspended between heaven and earth. There she learned the humility of walking in landscapes that erase boundaries. She journeyed to the mystical shores of Lake Titicaca, a shared lake between Peru and Bolivia and stepped foot at Urus Island (floating islands made from totora), the world’s highest navigable lake. She also explored the ancient ruins of Tiwanaku, a UNESCO World Heritage site and cradle of Andean civilization, where monumental stone gateways and sun temples whispered the wisdom of cultures long past. In Chile, San Pedro de Atacama stretched before her -the driest desert, red and alien, teaching her endurance of brazen cold.
Asia
In Nepal, Adelfa trekked deep into the Himalayas, reaching Annapurna Base Camp, where thin mountain air tested her lungs, but pranayama became her anchor with each conscious breath. She journeyed through Phakding, Namche Bazaar and Tengboche, where the monastery’s chants echoed against snow‑peaked backdrops, and explored Kathmandu’smarvels – Durbar Square, Swayambhunath, Pashupatinath and circumambulated Bhaudanath Temple – absorbing centuries of art, faith, and devotion carved into every stone and stupa and a stop at Chitwan National Park.
In Bhutan she made pilgrimage to Tiger’s Nest Monastery, clutching to the cliffs like the lessons that clung to her ribs. In Tibet, standing before the magnificent Potala Palace, she recognized a truth: there was no more height to chase, for here, body, history, and faith had already converged into a summit beyond mountains.
In Myanmar, Adelfa stood before the golden brilliance of the Shwedagon Pagoda, its stupa shimmering beneath the sun and thousands of years of devotion, and later made pilgrimage to the precarious Golden Rock, balancing impossibly on the edge of a cliff as if defying gravity itself. She journeyed by boat across the still waters of Inle Lake, where floating gardens and stilt-house villages revealed a way of life intricately woven with water, before finally wandering among the awe‑inspiring plains of Bagan, where more than 2,200 ancient pagodas rose like whispers of eternity across the horizon.
In China, she posed in front of the stones of the Great Wall, scaling its serpentine ridges while imagining the centuries of hands that built and defended it, and in Xi’an she encountered the haunting army of the Terracotta Warriors, thousands of silent clay soldiers standing as watchmen to an emperor’s eternal rest.
She cruised and kayaked on Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, where limestone karsts pierced turquoise waters in formations both otherworldly and serene. She playfully experimented with her handstand at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the largest sacred monument in the world, absorbing how dawn light softened its towers into silhouettes of devotion. And in Sri Lanka, she climbed the ancient rock fortress of Sigiriya aka Lion Rock, another UNESCO World Heritage site famous for its ancient rock fortress which features the ruins of a royal palace.
She journeyed further and hiked many times in northern Thailand, and Indonesia’s Mount Merapi. Other sites in Asia she visited are Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos and Taiwan.
Middle East
In Jordan, Adelfa wandered through the rose‑red canyons of Petra, the legendary “Lost City,” where temples and tombs carved into sandstone cliffs revealed the sheer genius and endurance of the Nabateans. In Israel, she walked the ancient streets of Jerusalem, the Holy Land, where three faiths converge and every stone seemed to carry the prayers, struggles, and hopes of humanity across millennia. From the Western Wall to the Mount of Olives, she felt the weight of history, a timeless yearning for peace and belonging. In Turkey, she traced the crossroads of continents in Istanbul’s domes and bazaars, and in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, she experienced the blend of desert traditions with soaring modern skylines (Burj Khalifa), reminders that cultures are always moving between origin and possibility.
Europe
She hiked Ireland’s Glendalough, Austria’s Unterberg, and Norway’s fjords. In Iceland, Landmannalaugar’s rainbow hills and Thingvellir’s tectonic rift stunned her into silence. She scaled Greece’s Olympus, trekked Andorra’s Pyrenees, and biked Lithuania’s Curonian Spit.
She visited Stonehenge in England, explored Italy’s Cinque Terre, Florence, Venice, Rome, Pisa. She traced paths through Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Malta, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Europe unfolded as both ancient and endlessly modern, a paradox in balance.
Africa
Morocco’s Atlas Mountains swept her mind wide open watching the sunset at the Sahara on a camel. Stormy weather denied her South Africa’s Table Mountain, but even in disappointment she learned surrender. Botswana’s Okavango Delta flaunted pure ecology, Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls roared eternity. In Egypt, the pyramids, the Sphinx, Karnak Temple, Luxor, Valley of the Kings, and the Nile carved her into silence. In Mauritius, water shimmered turquoise at every curve.
Oceania
In Australia, Adelfa marveled at the Great Barrier Reef, the vast living mosaic of coral and sea life stretching farther than the eye could see, its shifting colors and patterns reminding her that there are entire worlds thriving beneath the surface, vibrant and unending. In Fiji, she surrendered to palm-fringed stillness. In New Zealand, she trekked the Franz Josef Glacier, walking ancient ice as though walking on time itself.
Beyond the places themselves, Adelfa’s journeys have been shaped by the many ways she crossed them. She has perched swaying atop elephants in Asia, ridden camels across the Sahara’s endless dunes, paddled canoes through Okavango Delta, and bounced along rugged safari tracks in open-air jeeps and rattling trucks. She has kayaked, zipped above valleys, rafted roaring rapids, flown across oceans in massive aircraft that became gateways to new horizons and of course by foot. Each form of transportation was more than just a way of moving – it was part of the adventure, another teacher revealing how every journey has many rhythms, some slow and animal-soft, others loud and thundering with engines, each carrying her deeper into the world’s embrace.
Future Vision: An Invitation to the World
For all her journeys, Adelfa knows this: the greatest journey is not hers to hoard. Her vision now is collective. She longs to bring her students, her fellow travelers, her community – and indeed the broader population -into the journey with her.
Travel, she believes, is yoga for the soul. Trekking a mountain is an extended sun salutation. Sitting in temples across cultures is collective meditation. Sailing fjords is pranayama, the world breathing slowly through water and wind.
She dreams of retreats and pilgrimages across continents where yoga practice blends with cultural immersion. But even beyond logistics, it is her deeper calling: to guide human beings into a life of discovery, not just of the outer world, but of the depth within themselves.
Closing: The Journey Continues
Adelfa has lived many lives already: the fragile child gasping in monsoon humidity; the athlete pounding tennis courts; the post-surgical woman crying in pain; the yogini reborn in Mysore’s dawns; the world traveler inhaling earth itself.
With over a hundred countries behind her, infinite journeys ahead, she knows only one truth for certain: the greatest adventure still lies ahead. And she holds her hand open to the reader, the student, the neighbor, the stranger, the wanderer, the curious, the willing, inviting everyone to step into journeys of breath, movement, culture, service, and the world.
For what is a passport stamp if not a mantra? What is a trek if not a meditation? What is life itself if not the endless yoga of awakening?
Adelfa continues her journey. And she invites you to walk it with her.
